The San Diego Padres' ongoing quest for a World Series (or at least a playoff title). "You know that many runners enter a race, but only one of them wins the prize. So run to win! Athletes work hard to win a crown that cannot last, but we do it for a crown that will last forever." 1 Corinthians 9:24-25

BEAT LA!!

You know, the Padres have gone 40 years without any player hitting for the cycle. But for some reason, I think that’s finally going to be fulfilled very soon. We’ve come very, very close multiple times this season already. I’d say that we’ve been one hit away three or four times. It’s going to happen. Last night, Will Venable put on quite the show. Even though he didn’t hit for the cycle, it was still an impressive performance.

Will was in the leadoff spot for the first time this season, and I think that’s a good spot for him to be. He went 4-for-5 last night, with a single, two doubles, a triple, and a walk. He also scored four runs. Pretty amazing. He was just a home run away! Huge game for him.

Another person who had a huge game was Adrian Gonzalez. He drove in a career-high six runs, including a massive three-run homer.

I think this is going to be a game that we’ll remember for a long time. Not really for anything too huge, but there were just so many interesting aspects of it. First of all, it was another battle for our first-place lead. With LA’s nine-game winning streak or whatever, they’ve really gotten into this race. Now it’s not just SanFran we’re going to have to worry about. Like I’ve said before, my boys are not sitting comfortably on top of the NL West. This thing is a fight, and we have to keep pushing to keep this lead.

Second of all, this game was ridiculously long. I’m sure it didn’t help that we had scored eight runs before the fifth inning, and that Jon Garland was pitching. The guy’s a good pitcher and all, but my goodness, somebody really needs to speed him up. As it is, he only went five innings, allowing four runs on nine hits. But then again, Ramon Ortiz only went 3.1 innings.

Third, it was overall a great offensive game for the whole team. Sure, we have Adrian and Will as standouts, but the whole lineup really contributed. We had 10 runs and 14 hits. Notable is the top of the lineup: Will, four hits; Eck, two hits; Adrian, three hits. Chase Headley hit a solo home run.

At the same time, though, we left a ton of runners on base. We could have been well on our way to 20 runs, but we left 13 runners on base. We were only 7-for-22 with runners in scoring position! That was something that was a little frustrating, but we did take a little advantage. We got two runs in the top of the ninth after not scoring since the fourth inning.

One person on this team I am really frustrated with right now is Edward Mujica. I mean, he hasn’t been horrible, but he has been giving up a few runs here and there. I don’t like it.

Luke Gregerson and Ryan Webb had perfect one-inning outings, which was good. I was really glad that we got those two runs in the top of the ninth so that Heath wouldn’t have to pitch.

It was an amazing game. It’s always great to beat the Dodgers, and it was cool to break their winning streak, since they were so rude as to break ours over the weekend. I really hope that we’ll be able to get the little sweep tonight.

So I’d like to talk about Trevor Hoffman a little. A couple nights ago, he blew his fifth save of the year in 10 chances. That is not good at all. I’m worried about him. He’s usually a lot better than this. I mean, like he said, it’s not like he was throwing 90 last year and now he’s down to 80. He wasn’t completely solid last year, but he closed down games. I’d like to say that he’s not doing so well because he left San Diego, but I know that even if he did come back here, he would probably be throwing the same way. But whatever happens, he can’t retire yet, and he doesn’t want to do that either. He’s just a little off right now (okay, a lot) and the Brewers are going to give him a break for a couple games. We love you, Trevor!

Tonight the Padres are playing the Dodgers again. Kevin Correia is going against Clayton Kershaw. We haven’t done that well agaisnt Kershaw this season, but the past is the past.

2 Comments

It was such an amazing game! It felt so nice to win against the Dodgers at LA. Adrian and Will were impressive but so were the rest of the boys. Not one but all contributed this team for a win. We need to play like this everyday. Go Padres!!http://hyunyoung.mlblogs.com

I have Will Venable in my baseball fantasy team so that was my consolidation prize. The game was extremely long. I used to love to watch Maddox with his quick games.
Hey congrats on your ranking!
Emmahttp://crzblue.mlblogs.com

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